Craft Venture: Dealing with the unexpected
Does this audio familiar? You planned a detailed holiday sales strategy months in advance. You lot ordered all your shipping supplies. Y'all fifty-fifty fabricated multiple quantities of items. Your online store was sparkly and festive. And then … the unthinkable. Your figurer crashed. Your printer broke. You ran out of toner. A family unit emergency derailed everything but the essentials … your family. Y'all take a whole slew of missing orders, despite personally delivering the packages to your mail service office. Or, every bit in my instance, you were foiled by a stomach virus the entire weekend.
Sigh.
The funny matter almost life is that something otten goes wrong. People become ill. Technology fails. Accidents happen. Packages get missing. The existent question is … what are yous going to do when the unexpected happens?
You tin blow up. You tin can sink into despair. Y'all tin can move on. You lot'll probably experience some level of each of these!
In an ideal world, the unexpected won't happen, because you'll have already anticipated everything that tin become wrong. In reality, of class, we don't ever conceptualize everything.
In my day life every bit a managing director, I wait for employees who piece of work their way through obstacles and adversity, continually problem-solving and remaining productive. I style to approximate self motivation is to find out how someone deals with unexpected roadblocks. After all, life continually throws united states the unexpected!
You tin learn to better anticipate the unexpected. Begin – by yourself or with friends and family – all possible scenarios, along with contingency plans for each. For instance, as you're preparing to vend at a craft fair and need electricity to process credit cards using your laptop, what can you lot bring with you in example electricity isn't available? Ask a trusted friend known for attention to detail to give you feedback on your holiday selling strategy, craft fair gear up, etc.
You can as well learn to cover adversity. I take to admit that embracing adversity was not at the top of my list for most of this weekend! I wasn't happy most being and then ill, but I knew that getting worked up wasn't productive. I chose to expect for the positive, which I realized would be having more inventory for the Renegade Holiday Fair in San Francisco in just three weeks. Whew! One disaster solved a looming problem. When I feel myself cook down over a disaster, I remind myself to look for the opportunities. We often focus so strongly on the doors or windows closing around us that we miss those that are beckoning to u.s., opening new opportunities that we may have never dreamed of.
Also, reminding yourself to go into "problem solving style" can keep your focus off of the negative. Focus on solutions. Your packages are lost: how quickly tin can you send replacements? Your printer blew upward at midnight: do you have a 24 hr supermarket or drugstore that has inkjet printers? If non, bring labels to work with yous the following 24-hour interval, print up your postage stamp, and make a apex trip to the post office! If you've experienced a major family emergency, making order fulfillment impossible for a few days, notify your pending customers, brand sure that potential customers are aware of shipping delays, and send priority or even limited as before long as you're able (not at the cost of your customers!). How y'all handle the shipping delays will determine how your customers volition react; if you handle things with seeming aplomb, you lot may convert one time customers into repeat loyal buyers!
My weekend definitely wasn't the one I've been planning for; however, instead of spiraling into doom and despair, I embraced my state of affairs, stayed equally productive as I was able, and moved on. You can learn to bargain with the unexpected too – if y'all're not already skilled at doing so!
What nearly you? Are you a natural at anticipating problems? Do you lot melt downward when things go wrong? What have you learned – peradventure the hard manner – about dealing with the unexpected?
Happy holidays … despite beingness sick! Brenda "" Phydeaux at Etsy and 1000 Markets
Images: Holiday card set with mittens by Sloe Gin Fizz; Vintage etched and pressed glass compote from trampoline; Christmas Lights Scarf past Phydeaux
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